Kimberly Peirce: Stop-Loss

KIMBERLY PEIRCE talked at double speed and walked faster, cutting
through a hotel lobby during an interview, huge strides belying her
tiny stature. And yet, while she appeared to be trailed by those little
horizontal stripes that indicate a cartoon character's speediness, Ms.
Peirce is slow at something: making movies. It has taken her nine years
to follow up her much lauded feature debut, "Boys Don’t Cry."

"Yes, I should have made a movie sooner," she said with a deep laugh. "Yes, I should be a lot richer than I am. Mea culpa."

After
almost a decade in the Hollywood wilderness trying to find a project
that would equal her first film, Ms. Peirce earned just a single
directorial credit, for an episode of the television series "The L
Word." Now 40, she has a new film called "Stop-Loss,"
opening Friday, about American soldiers who have served in Iraq. Since
November she’s been promoting the movie on an extended road trip to
colleges and theaters, hoping to generate buzz for a subject that has
yet to seduce audiences, as producers of "In the Valley of Elah" and "Redacted," among others, can attest.

"Stop-Loss" stars Ryan Phillippe
as Sgt. Brandon King, a golden boy from small-town Texas who returns
home after two tours of duty in Iraq, ready to begin civilian life. But
after a hero’s welcome and a Main Street parade, he receives orders to
go back.

He is a victim of a stop-loss, the controversial
practice that allows the military to retain soldiers who have already
fulfilled their terms of service. Sometimes referred to as a back-door
draft, stop-loss is a result of a loophole in the contract soldiers
sign upon enlisting that permits "involuntary extensions" in the event
of a threat to national security.

Ms. Peirce learned about the
little-reported practice from her half brother Brett, who joined the
Army at 18, immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Speaking of her
brother with palpable pride (and straightening her back when saying his
name), Ms. Peirce recalled that during his tour in Iraq she would often
wake in the night to beeping instant messages from him. When she would
ask what he was doing, he'd type back: "You know, the usual:
kidnapping, razing houses, stuff like that." Ms. Peirce never knew how
literally to take those missives.

By 2005 Ms. Peirce was working on a script about American soldiers, using the title "AWOL,"
but when her brother told her about friends being sent back for third,
fourth and fifth tours of duty, her vision for the project changed.

"We
had been struggling because every time we went down the road with a
soldier who was like, 'I'm against the war, I don't want to fight,'
something died in the script. Whereas if we could stay with a soldier
who was severely patriotic and then had a change of heart, but was
still conflicted, it was much more interesting," she said. "It's a very
different debate than the people who don't want to fight at all."

In "Stop-Loss," Sergeant King, who has seen friends killed and maimed
under his command, goes AWOL. He hits the road for Washington,
accompanied by his best friend's girlfriend, Michele (played by Abbie Cornish,
to whom Mr. Phillippe has been romantically linked in real life). Her
fiancé, Steve (Channing Tatum), has returned with a case of
post-traumatic stress disorder so severe that he digs a foxhole in his
front yard. The film repeatedly circles back to the damaged soldiers'
rescuing of one another, in battle and at home.

"When I talked to
a wounded soldier who lost his limbs and still wants to go back, he
told me, 'It's not the war, it's the men,'" said Ms. Peirce. "That
blew my mind. There's this huge desire for camaraderie and male
bonding."

That quest for intimacy is the only obvious link
between "Stop-Loss" and "Boys Don't Cry," a love story based on the
real life of Brandon Teena, a Nebraska woman living as a man who was
raped and murdered in a grisly betrayal. A short version of Teena’s
story was Ms. Peirce’s film school graduate thesis at Columbia in 1995.
By the time she completed the feature in 1999, she had been researching
Teena for five years. That indie, shot on a shoestring budget of $2
million, gobbled critical awards and turned Hilary Swank
from a "Beverly Hills, 90210" bit player into an Academy Award-winner.
It also propelled Ms. Peirce out of obscurity and into a realm of
unmanageable expectations.

"I had given everything to that
movie," Ms. Peirce said. "I was exhausted, and I got offered millions
of dollars, many different movies. But it's like starting to run before
you're ready to run. You're still the same. You're looking for
emotional truth in your directing, but you’re dealing with 20 times
more people, 20 times more money. People are looking at every stage of
your process. How did I make 'Boys'? Well, I picked up a camera and
just went and did it."

KIMBERLY PEIRCE talked at double speed and walked faster, cutting
through a hotel lobby during an interview, huge strides belying her
tiny stature. And yet, while she appeared to be trailed by those little
horizontal stripes that indicate a cartoon character's speediness, Ms.
Peirce is slow at something: making movies. It has taken her nine years
to follow up her much lauded feature debut, "Boys Don’t Cry."

"Yes, I should have made a movie sooner," she said with a deep laugh. "Yes, I should be a lot richer than I am. Mea culpa."

After
almost a decade in the Hollywood wilderness trying to find a project
that would equal her first film, Ms. Peirce earned just a single
directorial credit, for an episode of the television series "The L
Word." Now 40, she has a new film called "Stop-Loss,"
opening Friday, about American soldiers who have served in Iraq. Since
November she’s been promoting the movie on an extended road trip to
colleges and theaters, hoping to generate buzz for a subject that has
yet to seduce audiences, as producers of "In the Valley of Elah" and "Redacted," among others, can attest.

"Stop-Loss" stars Ryan Phillippe
as Sgt. Brandon King, a golden boy from small-town Texas who returns
home after two tours of duty in Iraq, ready to begin civilian life. But
after a hero’s welcome and a Main Street parade, he receives orders to
go back.

He is a victim of a stop-loss, the controversial
practice that allows the military to retain soldiers who have already
fulfilled their terms of service. Sometimes referred to as a back-door
draft, stop-loss is a result of a loophole in the contract soldiers
sign upon enlisting that permits "involuntary extensions" in the event
of a threat to national security.

Ms. Peirce learned about the
little-reported practice from her half brother Brett, who joined the
Army at 18, immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Speaking of her
brother with palpable pride (and straightening her back when saying his
name), Ms. Peirce recalled that during his tour in Iraq she would often
wake in the night to beeping instant messages from him. When she would
ask what he was doing, he'd type back: "You know, the usual:
kidnapping, razing houses, stuff like that." Ms. Peirce never knew how
literally to take those missives.

By 2005 Ms. Peirce was working on a script about American soldiers, using the title "AWOL,"
but when her brother told her about friends being sent back for third,
fourth and fifth tours of duty, her vision for the project changed.

"We
had been struggling because every time we went down the road with a
soldier who was like, 'I'm against the war, I don't want to fight,'
something died in the script. Whereas if we could stay with a soldier
who was severely patriotic and then had a change of heart, but was
still conflicted, it was much more interesting," she said. "It's a very
different debate than the people who don't want to fight at all."

In "Stop-Loss," Sergeant King, who has seen friends killed and maimed
under his command, goes AWOL. He hits the road for Washington,
accompanied by his best friend's girlfriend, Michele (played by Abbie Cornish,
to whom Mr. Phillippe has been romantically linked in real life). Her
fiancé, Steve (Channing Tatum), has returned with a case of
post-traumatic stress disorder so severe that he digs a foxhole in his
front yard. The film repeatedly circles back to the damaged soldiers'
rescuing of one another, in battle and at home.

"When I talked to
a wounded soldier who lost his limbs and still wants to go back, he
told me, 'It's not the war, it's the men,'" said Ms. Peirce. "That
blew my mind. There's this huge desire for camaraderie and male
bonding."

That quest for intimacy is the only obvious link
between "Stop-Loss" and "Boys Don't Cry," a love story based on the
real life of Brandon Teena, a Nebraska woman living as a man who was
raped and murdered in a grisly betrayal. A short version of Teena’s
story was Ms. Peirce’s film school graduate thesis at Columbia in 1995.
By the time she completed the feature in 1999, she had been researching
Teena for five years. That indie, shot on a shoestring budget of $2
million, gobbled critical awards and turned Hilary Swank
from a "Beverly Hills, 90210" bit player into an Academy Award-winner.
It also propelled Ms. Peirce out of obscurity and into a realm of
unmanageable expectations.

"I had given everything to that
movie," Ms. Peirce said. "I was exhausted, and I got offered millions
of dollars, many different movies. But it's like starting to run before
you're ready to run. You're still the same. You're looking for
emotional truth in your directing, but you’re dealing with 20 times
more people, 20 times more money. People are looking at every stage of
your process. How did I make 'Boys'? Well, I picked up a camera and
just went and did it."